EREMUKO DUNEN ATZETIK DABIL

I must admit I was a bit surprised to find some Itoiz records in the library system (two albums actually), so I rented this one, which most likely completely unrepresentative of the group's early brilliant career, given that this album came almost a decade after the rest of their discography. But imagine my surprise when after the first minute, I had to pop up the Cd to make sure this was not a U2 album, as this could simply not be anything else than a U2 record. Imagine my deception at finding that this was indeed a Itoiz record (I love mid- 80's and early 90's U2). As with many, many, many, many, many, toooooo many groups around those lean 80's years, Itoiz was trying to survive and did so by "getting modernized": stinky drum sound, bad (uninventive) songwriting, copied or sampled sounds and most of all forgetting to do what they were doing best before, play GOOD music.

Not meaning to be severe with the group as the album is not bad per se, (actually it would stand probably in my top 50 of 1988, but because most of that decade was downright poor, and I would be hard pressed to find fifty albums form the decade in my top two million ;-) but this album has not much to do with the historic stuff. Musically we are hovering around a mid-80's snare drum-dominated pop with vocals delivered like Italian pop (Uuhmmm!!!. Just in case, no offence ETA;-) and a typical radio-formatted sound of the era. And this is exactly why such albums as this one are infuriating, you know these musicians were so much better than the crap they were forced to write. Maybe the text are meaningful (actually I have yet to see a folk prog Basque group with tame lyrics), but this all too obtrusive crappy drum sound is so overpowering, that it stops me (and most likely most progheads also) to even want to further listening of the album.

Best avoided!